Overview

Giotto's explorations and innovations in art during the early fourteenth century
developed, a full century later, into the Italian Renaissance. Besides making panel
paintings, he executed many fresco cycles, the most famous at the Arena Chapel,
Padua, and he also worked as an architect and sculptor.

Transformed by Giotto, the stylized figures in paintings such as the Enthroned
Madonna and Child took on human, believable qualities. Whereas his Sienese contemporary
Duccio concentrated on line, pattern, and shape arranged on a flat plane, the Florentine
Giotto emphasized mass and volume, a classical approach to form. By giving his figures
a blocky, corporeal character, the artist introduced great three-dimensional plasticity
to painting.

Painted during the latter part of Giotto's career, the Madonna and Child was the
central part of a five-section polyptych, or altarpiece in many panels. Giotto utilized
a conservative Byzantine-style background in gold leaf, symbolizing the realm of
heaven, and the white rose is a traditional symbol of Mary's purity as well as
a reference to the innocence lost through Original Sin. Yet, the Madonna and Child
introduces a new naturalistic trend in painting. Instead of making the blessing
gesture of a philosopher, the infant Christ grasps his mother's left index finger
in a typically babylike way as he playfully reaches for the flower that she holds.

Inscription

Marks and Labels

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Provenance

Probably commissioned for the church of Santa Croce or the church of Ognissanti, both Florence.[1] Edouard-Alexandre de Max [1869-1924], Paris;[2] sold 1917 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold to Henry Goldman [1857-1937], New York, by 1920;[3] sold 1 February 1937 back to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[4] sold 1939 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] Peter Murray's compilation of polyptychs by Giotto (An Index of attributions made in Tuscan Sources before Vasari, Florence, 1959: 79-89), complemented by the work of Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis (Giottus pictor, 2 vols., Viienna, Cologne, and Weimar, 2004: 1:285-303), lists, apart from the polyptych in the church of the Badia in Florence, four panels in the church of Santa Croce, one in San Giorgio alla Costa, a Crucifix and a now lost image of Saint Louis of Toulouse formerly in Santa Maria novella, and a Crucifix and four panels in Ognissanti.

[2] Edward Fowles, who managed the Paris office of Duveen Brothers, recalls in his memoirs, “In the autumn of 1917, our old friend Charles Wakefield Mori took me to see an early Florentine Madonna and Child (attributed to Giotto) which belonged to Max, the famous actor of the Comédie Française [in Paris]. As I examined the painting in Max’s bedroom . . . he told me it had been given to his great aunt by the Pope. Berenson considered it an excellent work . . . [by Bernardo Daddi] . . . we agreed to purchase the painting. Berenson later supervised its cleaning and confessed that he was beginning to perceive certain Giottesque qualities . . . I had an Italian frame made for the painting. . . .” (Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 104). In a letter of 31 October 1958, to Carlyle Burrows (see note 5 below), Fowles relates that he “bought the picture just 44 years ago,” which would have put the purchase in 1914 (Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 101, box 246, folder 3; copy in NGA curatorial files). The former owner’s story about the painting’s provenance does not seem plausible; at any rate no evidence can be adduced to corroborate it. On the Romanian-born Edouard de Max, friend of Cocteau and leading tragedian on the Parisian stage in the first decade of the century, see Louis Delluc, Chez de Max, Paris, 1918.

[3] The painting was displayed in the Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition (1920) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as part of the Goldman Collection.

[4] See the letter of 5 January 1937, from Henry Goldman to Duveen Brothers, in which he confirms the sale to the company of nine paintings and one sculpture (Duveen Brothers Records, reel 312, box 457, folder 4; see also reel 89, box 234, folder 23, and reel 101, box 246, folders 2 and 3; copies in NGA curatorial files).

[5] Carlyle Burrows states this in an article in the New York Herald Tribune (30 October 1958): 5.

Exhibition History

Loan Exhibition of Important Early Italian Paintings in the Possession of Notable American Collectors, Duveen Brothers, New York, 1924, no. 15, as by Bernardo Daddi (no. 2 in illustrated 1926 version of catalogue, as by Giotto, or an Assistant).

1930

Exhibition of Italian Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1930, no. 16, as Attributed to Giotto (no. 8, pl. V in commemorative catalogue published 1931; not in souvenir catalogue).

Shapley, Fern Rusk. Early Italian Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Three in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 16, color repro.

Galassi, Maria Clelia, and Elizabeth Walmsley. "Painting Technique in the Late Works of Giotto: Infrared Examination of Seven Panels from Altarpieces Painted for Santa Croce." In The Quest for the Original: Underdrawing and Technology in Painting. Symposium XVI, Bruges, September 21-23, 2006. Edited by Hélène Verougstraete and Colombe Janssens de Bisthoven. Leuven, 2009: 116-122, figs. 4, 6.